Math Games

We used this week to review some of our skills, and that included a lot of fun learning games.  I wanted to share some of them with you in case you would like to play them with your child at home!

Itsy Bitsy Spider Game
Materials needed:
Ice cube tray or egg carton
Plastic spider rings
Spinner or numbered die

1.  Start by singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and acting out the motions as you sing.
2.  Place your ice cube tray or egg carton vertically between the players as your "water spout" that your spiders will climb up and down.  Place your spiders in the bottom of one side.
3.  Each player takes a turn spinning the spinner or rolling the die and moving their spider that number of spaces up one side of the "spout" and once the spider reaches the top, it will move down the other side.
4.  Play continues until both spiders have climbed up and down the spout.  This game helps with number recognition and counting with one-to-one correspondence.

More or Less Game
Materials needed:
Circles cut out of construction paper to look like cookies--Draw a different number of chocolate chips on each cookie (Numbers 1-10)
Cookie Jar or some type of container

1.  Place the cookies inside your container.
2.  On each turn, decide together whether you will be looking for "more" or "less" this turn.  You could flip a coin and heads could mean "more" while tails means "less" or you can just take turns deciding.
3.  Once you know whether you are looking for more or less, each player reaches into the container and pulls out a cookie.  Count the number of chips on your cookie.  If on that turn you were looking for "more" the player with the larger number of chips wins the turn.  Or, if you had decided on "less" the player with fewer chips wins the turn.
4.  This game helps practice counting and number concepts such as comparing numbers.

Parking Cars Game
Materials needed:
Construction paper
Toy cars

1.  Prepare your paper with "parking spots" by drawing lines and numbering each space with a different numeral.
2.  Give your child a toy car and call out a number, and he or she must drive the car to that parking spot.  Continue calling out numbers, or to increase difficulty, roll a die and have your child count the dots and then find the corresponding numeral in the "parking lot."
3.  Another variation on this game would be to prepare your "parking lot" with letters of the alphabet and have your child park the car on the letters you call out.

Fly Swatter Game
Materials needed:
Fly swatter
Index cards labeled with numbers, colors, letters, or shapes

1.  Decide on the skill you would like to practice; ie: colors, numbers, letters, or shapes
2.  Label index cards with those items and hang them in various places around the room.
3.  Give your child the fly swatter and call out a color, number, etc. and have him or her run to the correct card and "swat" it.
4.  This is a fun way to review skills while getting some movement in.

Shape Hokey Pokey
Materials needed:
Paper shapes in a variety of shapes (or if you have a shape puzzle, you could use pieces from that)

1.  Gather your family to make a circle and hand out the shapes to everyone participating.
2.  Sing the traditional Hokey Pokey song, but call out shapes rather than body parts.  For example, "Put your CIRCLE in, Put your CIRCLE out, Put your CIRCLE in and shake it all about.  Do the Hokey Pokey and turn yourself around, That's what it's all about!"
3.  Continue calling out different shapes as you sing.

Number Memory Game
Materials Needed:
Cards labeled with numerals 1-10
Cards labeled with different number of dots

1.  Mix the numeral and dot cards together and lay them out face down on a table.
2.  One player turns over two cards, looking for a numeral card and a dot card with the corresponding number of dots.  If they are not a match, turn them back over.
3.  The next player turns over two cards, and play continues until all of the numeral cards have been matched to their dot cards.
4.  To start this game, you may want to use only the numbers 1-5, so there are fewer cards to be matched, and then build up to 1-10 once your child has a better understanding of the game.